But Wikileaks must
come up with an appropriate second act if it hopes to maintain its
"Big Brother" global role. Most of its leaks thus far
have focused on targeting America. It's already embarrassed the
U.S. government. So what could be better than gunning for the
U.S. private sector?

The site reportedly is preparing to
release a treasure trove of leaked information from a major U.S.
bank. Site founder Julian Assange aired the news in an
interview with Forbes
Magazine on
Monday.

Most believe that his target will be the
much-maligned Bank of America. Last year Mr. Assange in an
interview with Computerworld reported
having "several gigabytes" of data stolen off a Bank of
America executive's hard drive.

Shares of Bank of America
stock dropped on the New York Stock Exchange this week, as fears that
the company could become the next target sunk in.

Another
controversial Euro-American corporate giant also has reason to
fear.

BP p.l.c., an English company whose largest
division is in the U.S., is reportedly also to be targeting by Mr.
Assange's information attacks. He claimed in
the Forbes interview
to have "lots" of secret BP data, and was merely trying to
verify if it was all unique and unreleased.

One has to wonder,
though, if the public may be somewhat apathetic to a BP leak after
how much the company was lashed in the media following its
notorious oil spill. Nonetheless, the threat dropped BP
shares down 2.5 percent on Monday, following the announcement (share
prices have since risen back to around their previous trading
levels).

Before its efforts to disparage the U.S. government's
Middle Eastern war efforts, Wikileaks was
best known for a leak of information from banking giant Julius Baer,
which subsequently sued
the site.

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quote: "We already knew this... *yawn*. These agencies or persons had 'plausible deniability' on their side if questioned about their affairs. "Oh we would never do that, where is your proof?". Putting these things down "on paper" so to speak is important because it's proof/confirmation/the smoking gun that these things really are happening.

Technically, there is no smoking gun. Nothing has been proven, no plausible deniability upset. All that's been revealed is that the U.S. and Spanish governments think that Russia is a mafia state. Which many of us could have guessed at, but which was diplomatically beneficial for those governments to deny.

quote: I guess they're not damaging or in need of retaining their confidentiality, why keep something a secret that everyone already knows?

Because you and I have the freedom to ignore/boycott everything Russian if we choose. The U.S. and Spanish governments don't have that luxury, and frequently have to feign ignorance to sweet talk Russia into doing things for the better interests of the international community.

I'm a very frank and honest person. I've frequently been told that I'm too honest. If there's one thing this honesty has taught me, it's that sometimes the charade of ignorance helps achieve results much more quickly. This is especially the case when I'm acting as intermediary between two parties who despise each other. Sweden maintains an embassy in Iran and relays government communiques between the U.S. and Iran. If Sweden's diplomats' honest opinions on the content of those communiques became public, do you think Iran or the U.S. would really want to continue using Sweden as an intermediary?

Usually, having some communication, even if it's shrouded in the charade of diplomacy and etiquette, is preferable to having no communication because both sides being completely honest and breaking off talks because they can't stand each other. There's a huge grey area between war and peace, and releasing classified diplomatic documents just shrinks the size of that grey area.